


(s)he looks for him in dark places

by TheTartWitch



Series: One-shots of AUs [4]
Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, Charles is a mob boss, Raven spoils the X-Men rotten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 01:40:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8513794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTartWitch/pseuds/TheTartWitch
Summary: Charles and Raven don't stick around waiting for things to happen. They're ready for all life has to offer, especially since they have all the best cards.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Christy Ann Martine's poem (that has no name, as far as I could find. )  
> (She's searching for the man  
> who can melt her frozen heart.  
> The one who will chip away  
> at her walls until they fall apart.  
> She looks for him in dark places,  
> in the deepest corners of desire,  
> she'll find him in the morning sun,  
> he'll set her soul on fire.  
> He'll hold her heart next to his,  
> he'll read to her at night.  
> He'll dance with her  
> beneath the sheets  
> to the rhythm of his mind.  
> He'll fill her with his secrets,  
> bring her back to life.  
> He'll light her up like the evening stars  
> so she burns throughout the night.)

Charles and Raven aren’t idiots; in fact, they’re far from idiots. Sharon’s a drunkard and forgetful and it doesn’t take a second for Charles to reach in and introduce Raven to her as her second child. Sharon seems to accept this as well as she would and doesn’t even mention the gaps in her memory, probably believing her alcoholism to be the cause.

It’s around the time she brings Kurt and Cain home that they leave. With their abilities, they could get anything they wanted from life.

\--

They’re attending a party, the address and political impact of which Charles has gleaned from one of his favorite informants. It’s for a man named Shaw and his pet to make an appearance.

Charles normally wouldn’t care, but in this case the thought of Shaw’s pet in his informant’s mind conjures a clear picture of a boy his age, with restrained grey eyes and an affinity for metal. Raven agrees; “Mutant and Proud” has become their calling-card when they deal with lower-class criminals and the like. 

Most of Charles’s informants have no idea that they do anything for him at all. Those he tends to ignore on a personal level. Others, like Charles’s favorite, a smaller girl with pixie wings and acid spitballs, do everything in their power to get Charles what he wants because he is the most generous ruler they’ve ever had. He doesn’t discriminate, either: humans are just as welcome on his staff as mutants, making him a very popular person to work for. He has a clever mind, and an even cleverer way with everyone else’s, and that serves him well.

Shaw’s little pet reminds him of himself before Raven. He doesn’t think the  _ boy _ needs rescuing.

He thinks Shaw does.

\--

The party is terribly boring in the beginning. Charles gleans so much from some of the attendees that he simply contacts one of his trusted informants and gets them to write it all down for later. Three of his informants are already here, blending into the crowd and acting naturally. When the moment comes, however, they know what to do.

Shaw has his own following: a teleporter, a telepath, and a cyclone-maker. The metal boy sits to his right on the veranda of the house that’s tucked conveniently to the side. The walls shield it from being visible from the front and the back of the house, and there is only one door to get into the house from it. 

He saunters over lazily after a little while, Raven at his elbow pretending to be his father. She’s currently chatting with one of Charles’s prized informants, Darwin. She calls them his ‘X-Men’ and sews little costumes for them in her free time. They think it’s hilarious; Charles just shakes his head with a sigh and allows it to happen. 

Shaw smiles at him like a doting uncle. “Hello, young man! Here to meet the crowd?” There’s flint in his eyes; Charles wonders if the metallokinetic can sense it. 

The telepath taps his mind in a test; he keeps it open, malleable, as though he’s an average human with everything to hide but no way to do it, and she flickers in briefly. She apparently doesn’t see anything odd, but really, that’s only because Charles mastered that kind of shield at age seven. He’s eighteen now; her petty power won’t best him. 

But right now, that’s not the problem. He needs her attention, needs to make her curious enough to enter fully without being suspicious. 

“Oh,  _ old man _ ,” he laughs and waves a hand, “I’m here so they can meet  _ me _ .” It’s the trigger phrase: everyone inside the event freezes, hands lifting to their mouths or wrapping stiffly around their champagne flutes. One man had tossed a grape to catch in his mouth; it makes a crude splatting noise in the sudden silence as it hits the ground. The orchestra is silent, still and poised for the next note like dolls in a dollhouse.

He smiles angelically as his informants slink out of the house, cool and cold and grinning. Several of them he’s rescued directly from this awful man’s control, and here, now, they are ready to exact vengeance. 

He snags a strawberry from the man’s fruit bowl. Taking a small bite from it, he winks at the metal boy, who’s staring up at him like there’s a rainbow behind his head.

“Hello, darling,” he coos, as Emma Frost slumps limply in her chair, mind stuck in a loop showing the same empty lawn and his smile; as the teleporter vanishes and reappears in exactly the same space over and over again; as the windy one makes to stand and simply pauses, as though he’s a wind-up doll run out of power. Shaw’s staring at him with anger and a twinge of fear. He reaches deep into the man’s mind and, while looking directly into his eyes, snips the cord of control in his mind that connects him to his power. “Did you wait long?”

_ Eric  _ glances around himself in wonder, fascinated by the show of the man who’s controlled him for years finally meeting the victims of his teachings without the one thing that kept them in subjugation. He looks up at Charles, who hands him a strawberry, and who can feel the exact moment his mental walls crack open a little to show him a feeling:  _ strength _ .  _ Determination _ ,  _ fury _ , and wild, unbridled  _ power.  _ There’s a taste to Eric’s mind, like cinnamon and sugar, sweet and wonderful and toxic in large doses. Charles immediately loves it.

He thinks the boy will like him, too, given time.

**Author's Note:**

> Charles is a good guy, okay, it's not his fault he's got a strange sense of right and wrong right now.  
> Also, you know Raven would totally make Eric a costume (including the magenta and cape).


End file.
